286 BASSET HULL, Archipelago of the Recherche. [Ts^t'l^ni 



the Hilda on the following Tuesday. I therefore levisited 

 Charley Island, and found the Fleshy-footed Petrels in fairly 

 large numbers, and mostly with eggs, some showing slight signs 

 of incubation, but several were quite fresh and white. I also 

 found a nest of a Western Brown Hawk, probably the bird we 

 shot on the former visit was the owner. This nest was a very 

 large structure of sticks and twigs, i)laced in a medium-sized 

 paj^er bark tea-tree, about 15 feet from the ground, and con- 

 tained two slightly incubated eggs. Immediately beneath the 

 nest was another belonging to a former occujjation. We then 

 l)roceeded to Rabbit Island, about half a mile distant, and found 

 more burrows of the Fleshy-footed Petrel, and two nests of the 

 Little Penguin, both containing two eggs. This excursion occu- 

 l)ied the whole of December 10th. 



On Monday, 12th, Wright and I started out f(jr vSandy Hook 

 Island, 12 miles as the crow flies, but as we had to beat the 

 whole way, we must have covered four times that distance in 

 the seven hours it took us to reach a point a mile from the island. 

 Here the wind dropped, so we took the dinghy and ])ulled over 

 the remaining distance, only to find that the surge was too heavy 

 to allow a landing. There is a cove with a beach on the southern 

 side of the island, but to reach this would have meant i)ulling the 

 dinghy two miles further, and three back to the boat, so we aban- 

 doned Sandy Hook and landed on Gunton Island, which we had 

 passed on the way out. This island proved barren of all birds 

 €xcept the Singing Honey-eater and a solitary Kestrel. 



This completed our island visits, as the Bucla was expected 

 to arrive the following evening, and we had all our specimens to 

 [)ack up. The results of the expedition, so far as regards the 

 bird life, were not very encouraging, but the experience gained 

 would be useful in the event of another expedition being under- 

 taken. The failure of the motor boat made a great difiference 

 in the matter of time, the beating in and out against contrary 

 winds and currents in a sailing boat hampered us seriously, and 

 the necessity for constant caution in case of a change of wind 

 l)revented us from examining many of the smaller islands which 

 we i)assed by, but could have visited had we been certain of 

 getting away independently of the wind. This is a country of 

 contrary winds, and the islands are widely scattered over a sea 

 that is only navigable by daylight and in finest weather. Rocks 

 awash and reefs jut out in every direction, and one sails over 

 an unbroken surface for a while and then runs on to "foul 

 ground" where the seas jump up in a most upsetting manner. 

 'Phe Admiralty charts contain the warning words, "Dangerous 

 to navigation," and a strictly defined track is marked, outside of 

 which, of course, lie the most desirable of the islands— those 

 that have never been used for depasturing sheep or burnt off. 

 Landing on all but the most fre(|uente<l (about four) is a matter 

 of chance, and always attended with danger. The handling of 



